WASHINGTON
? Space Exploration Technologies
(SpaceX) has postponed a planned Nov. 20 launch of its Falcon 9 rocket
and
Dragon space capsule to no earlier than Dec. 7, according to a company
news
release.

"SpaceX
is targeting December 7th for
the first-ever fight of our Dragon
spacecraft,
with the 8th and
9th as backup dates," Kirstin Brost, a spokeswoman for the Hawthorne,
Calif.-based
company, said in a Nov. 8 e-mail. "We are submitting our request to the
[U.S.] Air Force today."

The
flight, a demonstration of the
medium-class rocket and Dragon cargo ship being developed under NASA?s
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, was
originally
slated to occur in September 2008. SpaceX?s COTS agreement was later
modified
to reflect a June 2009 initial demonstration flight.

Routine
resupply runs to the International
Space Station were expected to follow as early as December of this
year, but
hardware development has taken longer than planned.

Brost
attributed
the delay
in part to a slip
NASA's planned launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which was moved to no
earlier
than Nov. 30 after engineers discovered a leak in the orbiter?s
external fuel
tank Nov. 5. But Brost also said SpaceX plans to run more tests of the
Dragon
capsule at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. [Gallery:
SpaceX's
First Falcon 9 Rocket Launch]

"We
have assets tied to shuttle, but we
also think that additional testing on Dragon would be valuable," she
said
in a Nov. 8 e-mail to Space News.

Meanwhile,
SpaceX is still awaiting
regulatory
approval
from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) for the mission. The company
submitted its license application more than a year ago, but the FAA is
still
reviewing data on the Dragon capsule?s planned atmospheric re-entry.

In
June SpaceX conducted a successful
fight test
of Falcon 9
with a qualification unit of the Dragon spacecraft on board. The next
three
Falcon 9 missions will carry an operational Dragon cargo vessel in an
increasingly complex series of demonstrations under the terms of the
company?s
$278 million COTS deal.

The
first such mission calls for Dragon to
complete up to four Earth orbits, transmit telemetry data, receive
commands,
maneuver, re-enter the atmosphere and make a safe water landing in the
Pacific
Ocean for recovery.

Upon
successful completion of the demo
missions, SpaceX will begin making regular cargo-delivery runs to the
international space station under a separate fixed-price contract
valued at
$1.6 billion.

Gallery:
SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Launches on Maiden Flight,
Graphic

Photos:
Dragon Space Capsule of SpaceX

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